Summary: This post discusses my stance on Google’s penalization of paid links and interference with advertising models they can’t control. It was originally published mid-2007 at Jentrepreneur.com, and has moved to BizAmmo as a part of the sites merging.

1. Google created a new advertising market by factoring links into Pagerank.

2. Google convinced webmasters the world over that Pagerank actually means something. Advertiser demand was born.

3. Publishers respond naturally to advertiser demand. People are making a lot of money with this new market; Google not included.

4. Advertisers are also getting a lot of value with this market, which takes away at least some interest in other advertising models (Adwords anyone?).

It’s easy for Google to try to pretend that they’re just being altruistic in wanting cleaner search results. But if that were the case, they’d really have to scrap pagerank almost completely or at least stop factoring it into search results and let it just remain the little marketing tool that it’s always been for them.

Does Google have the right to work inclusion in their search engine any way they please? Sure they do. Does Google have the right to decide to devalue paid links? Sure they do.

But if Google wants to operate under a certain kind of business model, it’s their responsibility to make it work; not the webmasters’. We have no responsibility to add no follow to our paid links. We have no responsibility to report paid links. Frankly, the only people who are going to have the time to go around doing all of that anyway are the ones with too much time on their hands because they’re not out there earning money (that and the competitor saboteurs as someone else mentioned earlier). I’m all for cleaner search results. But why should any of us spend time that would otherwise earn us money cleaning up the mess of Google, because they didn’t think things through before jumping into their current model?

It’s up to Google how they choose to run their search engine. And it’s up to each webmaster how they choose to run (and monetize) their website. I say, if we’re going to do all of these favors for Google, what are they going to do for us? When Google starts making algorithm changes in your favor as per your personal request, you should certainly return the favor and change your own business model to suit their needs in return. Until then, it’s wishful thinking.

You have to choose what kind of business you run with your websites. It’s up to you whether you choose to be “choosey” in the links you’ll link to, or whether you’ll post a link from any Joe Schmo willing to pay you. My personal stance on this one is simple: only post links that would be of some actual value to your readers, and then it’s nobody’s damn business how you’re monetizing them. Your readers are the ones you need to be transparent with, and if you are, you’ll keep the trust and help ensure that you’ll always have other monetization models to fall back on if you need to. If you plan to run even remotely successful sites, you’d better have better things to be doing with your time than playing “clean up” for Google.

Categories: Advertising / Marketing / PR
Tags: Advertising, Google, link buying, paid links